Three Disciplines : Lessons for living from Stutz

As a child I was super disciplined. My family still praise how it wasn’t needed to tell me when to study . But I lost the mojo for a disciplined life in early twenties when I went to art college. You are the sun of 5 people closest to you . And my friends were happy go lucky . Or perhaps it was my shadow’s rebellion against my disciplined ego .

As I am trying to get the discipline mojo back I look for inspiring ideas on disciplined life . Phil Stutz , the psychotherapist to the stars , in his Lessons for Living talks about 3 types of disciplines . Structural , Reactive and Expansive.

Structural discipline is our routines .Getting our fundamentals, eating, moving, sleeping, right . Without structural discipline our life falls apart . When we are depressed this discipline is the hardest to keep. As it happened in my case . Phil advice his clients who are going through depression to get their structural discipline installed.

Reactive discipline is how we react to an external stimulus. Suppose you are ditching sugar but there is free doughnut. Your level of mastery of your reactive discipline will determine if you can resist the enticement.

Expansive discipline is when we step out of the comfort zone. Do something that scares us a bit . Phil says it needs not be something big but a tiny step that is challenging.

This idea of 3 disciplines is something that caught my heart and I am trying to take tiny steps to get them in my life